The acoustic correlates of the voicing distinction in French cognate stops.
Item
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Title
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The acoustic correlates of the voicing distinction in French cognate stops.
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Identifier
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AAI3047190
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identifier
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3047190
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Creator
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Abdelli-Beruh, Nassima Babaci.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Lawrence J. Raphael
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Date
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2002
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Cognitive | Health Sciences, Speech Pathology | Psychology, Experimental
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Abstract
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Both English and French contain stops that contrast phonologically in voicing. However, the phonetic-acoustic realizations of the phonological contrast differ markedly across languages. Furthermore, these phonetic-acoustic realizations vary within each language as a function of contextual variations (e.g. prosody, phonetic contexts, speaking rate). This study examines how some acoustic parameters (aspiration duration, closure duration, phonation during stop closure, preceding vowel duration) vary with specific contextual variables in sentence-length utterances spoken by native French speakers. These contextual variables include: the voicing class of the sounds adjacent to the target stop (vowel vs. unphonated consonant); the position of the stop within a word (syllable-initial, -final); the place of articulation of the target stop (labial, alveolar, velar); and the identity of the vowel within the word in which a stop occurs (epsilon, c). Twenty-one CvC syllables were embedded in two different sentence contexts: In the /pa/ context, the sentence was /il a di pa CvC a lui/. In the /pas/ context, the sentence was/il a di pas CvC sa lui/. Nine speakers were asked to place prominent stress on the CvC. Results show that in the /pa/ and /pas/ contexts, the duration of the vowel /a/ in /pa/ (/pa/:vowel), the Cvc:initial closure duration, the Cvc:aspiration duration, and the presence vs. absence of phonation in the Cvc:initial closure distinguish statistically word-initial /b, d, g/ from word-initial /p, t, k/. In the /pas/ context, speakers use one additional articulatory/acoustic feature differentially: the /s/ of /pas/ (/pas/:/s/) is consistently un-phonated in anticipation of /p, t, k/ (produced acoustically as [s]). But /s/ is consistently phonated (produced acoustically as [z]) in anticipation of /b, d, g/ which is indicative of regressive voicing assimilation that occurs 150 ms before a phonologically voiced stop. Additional results show that the voicing distinction is maintained for word-final stops in the /pa/ context, whereas neutralization occurs in the /pas/ context. The present results also clearly demonstrate differential context sensitivity, where some measures are sensitive to the word-stop position while others are sensitive to the addition of a voiceless phone (/pas/ context). No voicing by place of articulation effect was evidenced.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
